Trip from Shimla became a learning experience

Trip from Shimla became a learning experience

If there's one thing I've often prayed for, it's for the good lord to deliver me from garrulous drivers.

But instead of deliverance, I found myself stuck in a traffic jam en route from Shimla to Kalka on the backseat of a car driven by Surinder Singh, a star among the breed of verbose drivers.

As we lurched along accompanied by impatiently honking horns and the omnipresent exhaust fumes, he spoke non-stop for three hours about how Shimla's traffic conditions had deteriorated in the last few decades.

We, his captive audience had no option but to listen. But later, in the merciful silence of the night train from Kalka, I lay on my berth and pondered what he'd said.

Trip from Shimla became a learning experience

"Some of us Kalka drivers jointly rent a cheap room in Shimla during the peak summer season so that we have a place to sleep whenever necessary," he said.

Was there a solution to Shimla's traffic woes, I asked when we finally reached Kalka.

He glanced at the crush of taxis behind us at the railway station and said: "Educated people like you should figure out how to resolve these traffic issues - without putting poor old taxi drivers like me out of business."

Image: A Langur monkey runs across a road in Shimla.Photographs: Reuters